


we've got five years, what a surprise

by rosalinddd



Series: five years [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, hurty time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 06:17:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18772942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosalinddd/pseuds/rosalinddd
Summary: bucky visits steve in his garden





	we've got five years, what a surprise

Steve is already seated outside, Bucky knows this by the settled quiet of the house as he unceremoniously enters. It’s a nice day, besides, so why wouldn’t he be outside? Bucky walks through the empty house, passes the framed pictures of a family unfairly foreign to him on his way. He shoves through the screen door that leads off from the kitchen and spots the old man in a yellow chair, facing the overgrown garden. There’s another chair next to him and Bucky goes ahead and rounds it to sit. Steve doesn’t look away from the lilacs when he says, “Look at them bloom.”

Bucky looks as he settles into the May-warmed metal of the chair, elbows resting on the arms and fingers twiddling in his lap. “Bright,” Bucky comments in a voice rough with disuse. They sit in the quiet, the only sounds them breathing and the birds flitting through the trees. Bucky’s been doing this nearly every day now, coming to see Steve. He lives alone, of course, so it’s easy to drop by whenever. And he isn’t so far from the place Bucky just got with Sam. Plus, if he’s going to be angry and aching for Steve then he might as well do it at his side.

But today he’s too tired, too exhausted from lack of sleep to be angry. That’s another thing he’s been doing lately; not sleeping more than a couple hours a night. Sam hasn’t mentioned it yet but it will come soon. It’s in Sam’s nature to mother after a certain number of business days spent in the same attitude.

Bucky woke up in the early hours, still a swirling dark blue on the horizon, with ghost-like memories tugging at his brain. Legs hanging over the edge of a dock in June, water splashing up to tickle his toes. Steve threatening to push him in if he doesn’t stop brushing back his hair when the wind blows it into his eyes. “I’m just helping, Christ almighty!” “Don’t need two Mas, Buck.” He rolled over in his bed feeling the exhaustion and longing of some world out of bounds. But this Steve still knew that day, still had it tucked somewhere deep inside him, Bucky knew, like rose petals between yellowed inky pages of Steve’s old copy of Treasure Island. He could come to this Steve, as he always has, and sit with him in their familiarities.

The fingers of Bucky’s metal hand twitch then finally he reaches to slide his hand under Steve’s, turning his palm up and lacing their fingers together. Steve squeezes back and Bucky lets out a breath. He has never been afraid of Bucky’s metal arm, no version of it. Even now, he doesn’t bat an eye when this is the first time in decades he must feel the cool vibranium against his skin again.

They sit like that, eyes on the modest garden. The bloom of its happy colors draping over Bucky’s abject fatigue and dripping teardrops from the morning rain onto Steve’s.

“I listened to that storm this morning. I didn’t think you’d come today,” Steve finally says. Bucky glances at him, sees the wisps of a few hairs get pulled by the breeze and land in Steve’s eyes. Bucky’s fingers twitch again, his mind whirls again. Legs hanging over the edge of a dock in June…

“Just a little rain, Stevie,” Bucky tightens his fingers around Steve’s.

“I’m never sure when you’ll come.”

“S’what phones are for,” Bucky tries a smile and Steve looks to him finally and smiles back. That same, shy one-corner lift he’s been doing since 1918. “I dreamt about you last night. This morning. I dreamt about, um,” Bucky swallows, thick and pained around a rising lump in his throat. The gold of the memory is dulling the more he thinks about it and turns sour the longer he looks at the age spots on Steve’s hand. Steve waits patiently, maybe remembering all those years ago when Bucky was fresh out of cryo and still piecing his life back together. He needed time then, just two years ago for Bucky, to work out the words. Some days, even though he’s healing, he still needs the time.

“Do you remember when we were ten? Well, you were nine. And we went down to that dock like we used to. You liked to sit at the edge and dangle your feet off. I used to try and pull you back but you’d scoot even further, nearly falling off, ‘til I joined you. Do you remember?” Bucky looks at Steve, hopeful that this sliver of their childhood is not lost to him.

“I remember,” Steve nods. Bucky’s shoulders sag in relief.

“Remember when you finally got what you deserved for all your teasin’ and fell right in? Went home and Sarah was fussing all over you being soaked to the bone. You kept laughing because I had jumped in after you, pulling you out, so I was soaked too. It rained for a week afterward and you were laid up in bed,” Bucky shakes his head. The more he retells it the more detail that comes back to him. He can hear that wet cough that broke from Steve’s reddened lips, the way he had panicked and reach blindly out for anything to hold when he couldn’t get enough air.

Steve squeezes his hand and Bucky breaks out of the memory to lift his gaze to him. Steve is fixing him with a stare, the one that means I’m here, keep going.

“You told me it was my fault it rained. Almost drowned so the water came back out to try and finish the job.” Steve adds with a breathy chuckle. He doesn’t laugh so loud or hard anymore. Just has these bouncing exhales married to wide smiles. Sometimes if he does manage to laugh a little harder, he coughs on the tail of it. That’s another thing Bucky sorely misses, ringing laughter that brought tears to the corners of Steve’s bright blue eyes.

“It almost did. I snuck up your fire escape ‘n through your window one of those nights, all of those nights. You’d scoot over in bed and I’d get in and we’d face each other. I listened to you breathe because if I couldn’t hear it then I’d think you weren’t doing it,” Bucky takes a deep breath, retracts his hand from Steve’s to rub the flesh of his palm with a thumb. “I can still hear the way you spat up water when we rose back up to the surface. It was so hot that day.”

“Steve, I—” Bucky leans forward in his chair, elbows on his knees and fingers in his scalp.

“Buck,” A featherlight hand rests on his left shoulder. He can feel Steve rubbing circles, patting him reassuringly. It’s too much. “You don’t have to appeal to me through old memories. What happened to you hating that I lived in the past? Now that’s all you talk about.”

“Stop throwing my words back at me. It’s not comforting. I just don’t know what else to say to you.”

“You never bring anything up that didn’t happen in Brooklyn. You don’t talk about the war or—”

“Because I don’t wanna talk about how we killed people together, Steve. I don’t want that. I don’t want it. In case you didn’t know this I just stopped killing things a month ago. And I only killed in the first place ‘cause you asked. I didn’t get a cushy eighty years to sit back and fester in my overwhelming PTSD.”

“Okay,” Steve pulls his hand back and watches Bucky carefully from his chair. He guesses he wasn’t too tired to feel heated rage today after all.

“There’s nothing worth talking to you about but Brooklyn. I don’t wanna know about the life you lived without me and you already know my present,” Bucky huffs a bitter laugh. “Know something, pal? You’re the only person left alive on this whole goddamn planet, in the whole goddamn universe that knows every part of me. You knew every version of me, good and bad. But I don’t know every version of you. Jesus, what a shit hand that is.”

“I know, Bucky.”

“You know,” Bucky leans back in his chair with enough force to make it creak. “You know what I know?”

“Hmm?” Steve smiles at him.

“Your hyacinths are out of control. Disgraceful.” Steve laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> can't stop writing bucky angst sorry


End file.
